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Guided Meditation: With a Light Touch

Good morning, good day everyone. Here we are, and here you are over there. You're there as you're here, my there is here, so I'm confused with this worldwide way in which we're all present on this globe at the same time.

To start this meditation, see if you could enter into a meditative posture from the inside out. Adjust your posture. Maybe sway back and forth a bit, sway forward and back, and see if you could maybe twist a little bit and find a place where you feel most aligned with alertness, and a kind of alignment where your whole body can begin to be unified in harmony here.

One aspect of meditation is coming into a unity, a harmonious whole where there are no divisions, no borders. It is as if different parts of who you are made up distinct countries: the mind, the body, the heart, the emotions. These are not distinct countries with sharp borders. You are made up of a unified, seamless whole where all of who you are can be included. All of who you are has a place here.

Gently close your eyes and take a few long, slow, deep breaths. Breathe as if you're breathing from deep inside, spreading the inhale's expansion through your whole body. Bring your whole body into play as you breathe in deeply. And as you exhale, let go, relax, and settle into this body. Have a longer exhale than usual, but only as long as it's comfortable, to let go, release, and settle.

Then let your breathing return to normal. Perhaps with a normal breath, maybe, just maybe, you can find a light touch in relationship to breathing. The body that receives the inhales does so with a light touch. For the body that settles as you exhale, there's a lightness, maybe even a tenderness in the exhale and the body breathing out.

Breathing in, feel the activities of your mind, the energies of thinking, the feeling sensations of having concerns and worries. And as you exhale, soften the mind. Quiet the mind. Try to lighten—not "lighten up"—but maybe lift up and release some of the weight of the mind, so the mind has a lightness, or at least your awareness has a light touch.

Then, settle into the body breathing. Whatever you're aware of in any moment—especially when you are consciously aware—let that conscious awareness have a light touch, the lightest of touch. There is no force or assertion, and there is no hesitation. Just lightly touching, feeling, and sensing the experience of the moment. The metaphor of touch suggests that it's always in the present moment. Touching is always a present-moment experience.

Have your awareness touch and be touched by the experience of the breathing body, of feelings, of whatever is happening here. Stay here in the present moment, relaxing the thinking mind. Quiet the thinking mind to be just here with this experience.

(Meditation)

As we come to the end of the sitting, allow your attention and your thoughts to lightly consider the people of your life, the people in your neighborhood or community, or the people you're aware of through the news or communication of some kind.

Gently let your awareness spread out across the lands, as if it can reach out towards where all the people of the world live. As you breathe in the suffering and challenges that people live with, offer to take it from them. Not so it's stuck in you, but so you can transform it on the exhale with the blessings of your goodwill, the blessings of your well-wishing and care for others.

Always, at the end of a meditation, consider how the meditation practice can be for the welfare and happiness of others. How whatever benefits we have received from meditation, known or unknown, can be happily spread from us on the exhale, out into the world.

We take into account the people we share this planet with, the beings we share this planet with, and we offer our goodwill, our care and kindness, our mutual support.

You might say these words, repeating them after me, maybe silently in your hearts:

May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free.

And may I contribute, even in the smallest ways, to this possibility.

Earth Day and the Art of Living

This is the Sunday after Earth Day. Some of us sometimes will commemorate Earth Day not on the 22nd of April, but on the Sunday following it or close to it. I certainly would love to speak a little bit about this home that we live in, this home that we share, and the care of it.

As many of you know, the prefix 'eco'—like ecology—means 'home' in Greek. So, ecology is the study of our home. I just finished two days of training that I co-teach on Buddhist eco-chaplaincy, the spiritual care in relationship to our home that we live in, this home that we all share together.

When people live together in a home—roommates, family—there's a whole different relationship we have to the mutuality of that home space and the mutual care of it. Keeping it clean, or creating an environment that's nice for everyone there, means caring for the people under the same roof. We share this global home that we call the Earth.

In the way that I like to see things in words—it's an ancient game that Buddhist teachers reaching back^[1] into ancient India love to take Indian words and do a kind of, not exactly etymology, but to tease apart things from the word. It turns out that the word 'Earth' and the word 'heart' both overlap with the letters 'a-r-t', art. And maybe the meeting place of our hearts and this Earth is in the art of living.

This expression, "the art of living," offers a rich series of connotations. It suggests that life can be a form of art, more than it is the work of life, more than it is a duty or a burden. Art is something that we offer our hearts to, our care, our creativity, our attention to detail. And so, this Earth of ours: do we live on it with the art of living?

One of the most powerful images coming out of Buddhism regarding our relationship to the Earth is the image here of the Buddha. The altar has this posture, what's called the Earth-touching mudra^[2]. I guess I'm blocking it a little bit with my shoulder, but if I lean a little bit to the side, I think maybe you can see that the Buddha's right hand is reaching down over his knee. His fingers are just about to touch the earth, or maybe he's just touched the earth and he's pulling it away.

You can see the delicacy, the simplicity, the very relaxed way in which the hand is draped over the knee. It's a relaxed kind of going forward to touch. It's not grabbing the earth or attacking the earth. It's a light touch. Just the tips of the fingers are going to come down and touch the earth. I can't help but think of the image in the Sistine Chapel where Michelangelo has painted the touch of God on the fingers of Adam, and Adam is just coming alive being touched by God. There also, we have this light touch, this gentle touch. To live touching the earth, to live lightly on the earth, implies a light touch in how we live our lives.

There's a wonderful verse where the Buddha says that like a bee collects pollen from the flower without harming the flower, a wise person walks through life without harming anyone or anything. Certainly, we get our food, our water, we get what sustains us from the earth. But we can do so in a way that has a light touch, that doesn't harm the very thing that is sustaining us, like a bee.

Here the Buddha is touching the earth lightly. The story of this is part of the mythology of Buddhism. You don't find this story in the earliest layers of the Buddhist records from the Buddha's life, but maybe 500 years later, you find this story that is really colorful. I think of it as a time in the ancient world where there were no technicolor movies, there were no color photos. It was very much an oral culture. It was orality that would paint these dramatic pictures that were evocative in their imagery, maybe not just for entertainment's sake, but also to evoke emotions, to evoke a sense of awe at this life we live.

The story goes that the Buddha was sitting on the ground. The statue we have behind us isn't really sitting on a pedestal; he's meant to be sitting on the ground, on the earth. The evening before his enlightenment, he was sitting there in his quest for awakening, for freedom from suffering, to really get to the bottom of what suffering is and to find a way not to suffer. That's considered to be one of the great noble quests: to bring suffering to an end, not as a fantasy or a fable, but as a real possibility for human beings. That was his dedication.

In this myth, there are a lot of forces that want to prevent the Buddha from becoming free of suffering, discovering this peace, and stepping away from the attachments, addictions, and hostilities of the heart that have such a strong compulsive pull and demand on our attention. These are represented by Māra^[3] and Māra's armies. Māra came with huge evil forces, and the descriptions are like Lord of the Rings—huge forces marching across the plains with all kinds of ogres and orcs and awful creatures. There were huge elephants that must have been the tanks of the ancient world, fighting elephants coming marching to chase the Buddha away, to destroy the Buddha, to prevent him from becoming enlightened.

The drama of the stories is worthy of something like Lord of the Rings. They throw every possible weapon they have at the Buddha: arrows and javelins and sharp-edged discs. The Buddha, as you see in the statue, is unmoved and relaxed. He breathes at ease and doesn't react or flinch in any kind of way. In fact, as tens of thousands of arrows and spears fly through the air at the Buddha—the air buzzing and howling with all these armies and dragons attacking the Buddha—all the weapons turn into flowers, and the flowers land on the ground.

After a while, Māra realizes that violence is not going to dissuade the Buddha from his peaceful endeavor, his calm discovery of where freedom from suffering is. So Māra comes with his last weapon, and that is to sow doubt in the mind of the Buddha, to challenge him, to claim: "You have no right to become awakened. You have no right to attain this highest capacity of human peace that a human being can experience."

I interpret all this as being psychological forces inside the Buddha himself that are casting all the forces they can to prevent him from letting go of how he usually has been. The attachments don't want to be let go of. His self-worth has huge doubts whether it's appropriate for him to become awakened. "Isn't awakening and freedom from suffering kind of an abandoning of people? Isn't it attaining something profound and beautiful for oneself, and is that okay to do when everyone else is suffering?" All kinds of doubts can come up.

One of the things that Māra says in trying to sow doubt in the Buddha's mind is that, "You have not benefited people enough to deserve being awakened. You have not practiced enough generosity. You haven't given enough to people in the world, and without having lived for the benefit of others, it's not appropriate for you to become awake."

The Buddha says, "Well then, I'll bring a witness who can bear witness to all that I've done to support this world, all the generosity that I've done over the many lifetimes I've lived." He said, "I'll call upon the Earth as my witness." Here we have this provocative idea that the Earth, that's been around for so long, is the witness that keeps the record of what we have done.

I grew up on the coast of Italy, and it was remarkable to see the islands around where we lived. It was kind of beautiful at first, and then I realized that they were completely denuded of soil, mostly bare rock, because they had been over-farmed with grapes and olives 2,000 years ago in Roman times. All the soil had washed away from the over-farming of them and nothing was left. They'd cut the trees and farmed, so the record is still there. The record of what humanity is doing to this planet—the Earth remembers. It's here.

But the Earth remembers also the good. And so the Buddha asks the Earth to bear witness to all the generosity and all the benefit he'd brought people over his lifetimes, to assert his right, the okayness to let go of his clinging and attachment, to become free and experience the happiness of liberation.

That's when he reaches down to touch the Earth, to ask the Earth to be that witness. I love that he doesn't assert his right to awakening. He doesn't rely on his own feeling that, "Yes, it's okay for me to become free." He's calling on something that's larger than himself, or beyond himself, for the support, for the validation, for the encouragement that yes, it's okay.

If we see ourselves as part of the natural world, part of the Earth, we are the Earth because we're part of it. We are made up of a hundred percent recycled material that has been part of the Earth for eons. In a sense, we arise out of the Earth. We are the Earth that can see itself, the Earth that can hear itself, taste itself, and then walk on itself.

So here the Buddha is touching the Earth, this light touch of the Earth. In reply, to bear witness to his right to be awakened and all the generosity and good he had done, the Earth has an earthquake. Then the legions of Māra's armies realize that the Buddha indeed has the right to be awakened. They get frightened and run away in all directions. The text says no two of them went the same direction or on the same path, and they run away.

In the vacuum that's created, all these deities come to create light and celebration, but the Buddha just sits there. He's sitting under the Bodhi tree, and as he's sitting there, a few leaves gently fall from the tree and land on his robe, land on his lap. There's no explanation about what this is about, but it's beautiful imagery. Again, the Buddha is in nature, sitting at the base of a tree, and now this gentle movement of a Bodhi tree leaf that looks, coincidentally, a little bit heart-like, comes down, lands on the Buddha, and sits there. I take it as an intimacy with nature, the natural world.

Only then does the Buddha see deeply into the nature of this world. He sees something about the interconnected nature of this world, and Paṭiccasamuppāda^[4] is the word for this. In doing so, he becomes liberated and free. In this technicolor mythology, the whole universe gets lit up in light. Even the dark crevices of the universe light up with the Buddha's enlightenment.

Eventually, he gets up and walks a long distance across northern India to find people that he can begin teaching, to find people he thinks are ready for his teachings now that he's awakened. So his awakening is not the end of the story, but in a sense, it's the beginning. In the ancient text that talks about this, it's actually made up of three large chapters. The third chapter begins after his awakening. It's a new chapter in the Buddha's life when he goes out to be of service, to serve and to help the world.

We have this wonderful myth that is evoking our connection to the Earth as part of practice, as part of the natural world. The idea of the Buddha sitting under the Bodhi tree, sitting on the earth, touching the earth, being caressed by the leaf that falls down. It's also said in this mythical story that with his awakening, the flowers bloom, and petals from the trees around begin falling as well. So, the art of living, an art of caring, is living in such a way that we live beautifully.

It's one of the associations I have with the idea of art. Certainly, not all art is meant to be this way, but when I think of the art of living, I think of living beautifully, living with a beauty, living with an ease. Living with a creative source from within that is not burdened by distress, not caught in hostility and aversion, not caught up in self-condemnation and feelings of guilt, not caught up in despairingly giving up. Rather, one that feels the natural aliveness and lived life that wants to meet life, wants to be connected. When we are intimate and connected to what we love the most, then we'll treat it like a bee taking pollen from a flower without harming the flower.

We meditate, become free, and then have access to an intimacy, a closeness, or a love for what we see and what we do. In the story of the Buddha's enlightenment, this mythology, the whole universe gets transformed with his enlightenment. As I said, flowers and fruit bloom out of season, music starts being played in the skies, light spreads throughout the universe. Beautiful things happen.

For me, this is a metaphor for how we see the world when we become free. When we settle and become intimate, present, and clear, and we've cleared away the distractions, preoccupations, fears, and worries that we live under, the eyes with which we see the world change. It isn't that the world has changed, and it's not to be Pollyannaish about the suffering that goes on in the world at all. But the eyes see the world tenderly. The eyes see the world and see beauty, love, or sweetness. In this mythology, it says all the oceans of the world turn into sweet water, fresh water, when the Buddha becomes enlightened. It's as if everything changes and there's a beauty in this world. To live beautifully.

One of the nuances often lost in English translations of the Buddhist teachings is that the Buddha talked about beautiful karma, beautiful actions in the world. The word he uses is kalyāṇa^[5]. Sometimes it's translated as "good karma" (and then there's "bad karma"), but in many teachings, the Buddha doesn't use the word "good," but uses the word "beautiful." Our actions, how we live our life, can have a beauty to it, a gentleness or a tenderness. Part of that is to live beautifully in relationship to this home that we have, the Earth, and to care for it, to love it in the art of living and the art of caring for this world.

To make that not a subsidiary thing that we do, a sideshow for us, but to really live in a way that we care for this world, the people of our lives, the environment we live in, the planet we live in. It's not a duty and it's not a burden. It's not like we make ourselves so much more busy, but rather it becomes an innate expression of our love, our creativity, the artfulness from which we are living our lives.

This is why we practice. We practice every day, we practice all the time, not because it's a duty, not because it's an escape per se, but because it allows the best of who we are, the most beautiful qualities of who we are, and the richest ways in which we can see and hear the world to become natural for us. It becomes where we live from. We live from freedom, ease, and peace. We don't live from hurry, greed, wanting, filling our plate, or attacking. We live with a light touch.

The Earth will bear witness. The Earth remembers, and the Earth hears. One friend of mine says it's because the word 'Earth' begins with e-a-r, with 'ear', that we know the Earth is listening. The Earth is listening to us, watching us, certainly caring for us, and it keeps our record.

Perhaps when you're ready for your enlightenment, you can call upon the Earth to bear witness to your right to become free. I think the Earth will support us if we care for this Earth that we live on. May we care for it together as if it is our home, because it is our home.

On this Earth Day, Earth Week of 2021, thank you.